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Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation within the Education Amendments of 1972. Congress enacted the law to make discrimination based on sex illegal at educational institutions receiving federal aid. Though intended to help women achieve more academic equality, it had the added effect of increasing the number of women in sports. The athletic community hasn’t looked back since.

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The Athletic examines 50 facts about the history of women in sports and Title IX to commemorate the historic anniversary — what it took to get there and maintain it.

1. In the early days of women’s college athletics, most of it was intramural competition with students at the same schools. Designated events called “play days,” which included intramural, club and sorority matches, provided women an athletic outlet. In a 1936 study, 70 percent of surveyed colleges said play days were the predominant form of sports participation for women.

2. The first scheduled intercollegiate women’s sports event was a tennis match in 1894 between Vassar College and Bryn Mawr. Ultimately, the tournament failed because it didn’t have the college’s support. As one student described, the faculty told the women to “run out in the garden, children, and play ball with one another nicely.”

3. The Cal and Stanford women’s basketball teams were the first women’s teams that competed intercollegiately, along with a game between Washington and the Ellensburg Normal School, when four squads squared off in 1896.

4. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded in 1943, was the first professional women’s sports league in the United States. It was created to replace Major League Baseball, which was canceled because of World War II. This history became popular with the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”

5. Mae Faggs, also known as the “Mother of the Tigerbelles,” became the first student-athlete to receive a track scholarship from coach Ed Temple in 1952. Temple’s women’s track and field team produced 40 Olympians — including Wilma Rudolph — who won 23 Olympic medals and included eight Hall of Famers.

6. In 1957, the Division for Girls and Women’s Sports (DGWS) amended its long-held official position opposing women’s intercollegiate programs, saying they “may” exist. Six years later, the organization took it a step further, saying competition was “desirable.”

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7. The Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, formed by the DGWS, was responsible for the first national championships for women. In 1969, women could compete in gymnastics and track and field.

8. The Title IX component of the Education Amendments of 1972 was added in to rectify Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

9. Though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin regarding voting, segregation, publicly used entities and employment, sex discrimination at educational institutions was excluded.

10. Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI), who co-authored the amendment with Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN), was the first woman of color and Asian-American woman elected to Congress. As the first woman from Hawaii elected to Congress, she served 12 terms.

11. Mink was not only paramount in the creation of Title IX but also played a key role in the landmark Roe v. Wade case, which protects a pregnant person’s right to an abortion without excess restriction from the state and government. Mink was the first representative to oppose a Supreme Court nominee on the basis of discrimination against women, which subsequently forced President Richard Nixon to move on to his third nominee, Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, 1973, almost exactly seven months after Title IX was passed.

12. Twenty years ago, the Education Amendments of 1972 was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, after she died on Sept. 28, 2002.

13. Although Title IX has played a critical role in the increase and expansion of women’s sports, the original intentions of the amendment had nothing to do with sports.

14. Before Title IX, the NCAA didn’t hold championships for women’s sports and didn’t offer women athletic scholarships. There were 170,000 men playing college sports; women accounted for only about one-sixth of that, with 30,000 women participating in university athletics.

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15. In 1972, women’s sports accounted for only 2 percent of athletic budgets. The average number of women’s teams was just over two per school, and only 15 percent of women in college played sports.

16. The University of Chicago created national headlines in 1972 by offering the Gertrude Dudley Scholarship, the first “nationally advertised” four-year athletic scholarship for women. The scholarship was named after the administrator who came to the university in 1898 and created organized sports for women.

17. On Feb. 17, 1976, the NCAA filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Title IX, but two years later, the suit was dismissed.

18. In 1976, Brown and Smith played the first varsity women’s college soccer game.

19. At the time, the governing body of collegiate sports argued that enforcing Title IX would destroy the structure of intercollegiate athletics by forcing schools to take money away from revenue-producing sports to support women’s teams, thus resulting in added strain on athletic programs already being hit by inflation. Title IX, the NCAA argued, did not apply to athletic departments because they didn’t directly receive federal funds.

20. Colleges and universities had to comply with the new Title IX legislation by 1978, and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was left in charge of the enforcement and interpretation of how to apply the law.

21. A small northwestern Pennsylvania school helped effectively take away coverage for athletics in 1984. Grove City v. Bell limited Title IX’s scope, save for athletic scholarships. The Supreme Court ruled that Title IX applied only to specific programs, such as financial aid offices, that received federal funds. By this logic, athletic departments weren’t covered.

22. Grove City v. Bell was reversed because of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. It was done so over the veto of President Ronald Reagan, and it restored Title IX’s wide-ranging coverage. All programs and activities of an educational institution, it ruled, had to comply with Title IX if federal funds were being received.

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23. According to R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Carpenter, who conducted a 37-year study, more than 90 percent of women’s teams were coached by women in 1972. By the conclusion of their research in 2014, that number had plummeted to 43.4 percent.

24. In contrast, approximately 3 percent of coaches in men’s college sports are women, the Women’s Sports Foundation found in 2016.

25. In the 50 years since Title IX was instituted, no school or educational entity has lost funding for Title IX violations, though several schools have been fined and sued.

26. After players and coaches highlighted inequities between the men’s and women’s 2021 NCAA basketball tournaments, an external review was conducted. It found that the NCAA prioritized men’s basketball “over everything else in ways that create, normalize and perpetuate gender inequities.”

27. The 2022 NCAA women’s basketball tournament expanded to a 68-team field — similar to the men’s — and for the first time used the March Madness branding.

28. The U.S. women’s team competed in basketball for the first time at the 1973 World University Games, winning a silver medal. This helped foreshadow Olympics participation at the 1976 Games. Pat Summitt was on the 1973 roster.

29. That 1973 team’s coach, Jill Upton, had a niece who would make even more history. Sarah Thomas became the first female referee to officiate a Super Bowl in 2021.

30. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was founded in 1971, and the first women’s basketball tournament was held in 1972. Immaculata became the first champion, winning three consecutive titles.

31. Queens College and Immaculata competed in 1975 at Madison Square Garden in the first women’s college basketball game hosted at the famed arena. Immaculata beat Queens 65-61 in front of nearly 12,000 fans. Nancy Lieberman was there as a teenage fan.

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32. The NCAA started to take control from the AIAW and held championships for women in 1981-82. Universities chose to compete in one or the other, and in 1982 two women’s national title basketball games took place. Rutgers won the AIAW title, and Louisiana Tech won the first NCAA women’s tournament. The AIAW soon folded, and the NCAA took over women’s sports.

33. The NCAA’s first coed championships were in rifle in 1980.

34. Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first woman to receive a UCLA basketball scholarship, and in 1979 she became the first woman to sign an NBA contract.

35. Only 8 percent of women 19 and older were college graduates in 1970, compared with 14 percent of men, according to the Department of Justice. In 2009, that figure rose to 28 percent for women. Enrollment in higher education has increased at a higher rate for females than males.

36. Kathrine Switzer of Syracuse University became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon in 1967. Female competitors were banned until 1972.

37. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. It went to states for ratification, but it never reached the full threshold. The proposed amendment still has not been ratified.

38. Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes,” with millions watching on TV. She had been denied a college scholarship.

39. In 1974, Sen. John Tower (R-Texas) proposed an amendment that would have modified Title IX by exempting revenue-generating sports like men’s basketball and football from Title IX compliance. It was rejected.

40. In 1977, a group of Yale students became the first to sue a university over sexual harassment under Title IX. Though the students didn’t win, Alexander v. Yale set a precedent that remains: Sexual harassment would be viewed as sex discrimination under Title IX.

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41. In 1990 at Kentucky, Bernadette Mattox became the first female to serve as an assistant for a men’s Division I basketball team, under Rick Pitino. She later coached Kentucky’s women’s team.

42. Liz Heaston was the first woman to score in college football. In 1997, she kicked two extra points for Willamette, which competed in the NAIA.

43. Vanderbilt’s Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play and then later score in a Power 5 football game, kicking an extra point in 2020. New Mexico’s Katie Hnida was the first woman to score at the Football Bowl Subdivision level in 2003.

44. Dawn Staley became the first Black coach, male or female, to win two Division I basketball titles. Staley’s South Carolina team took down UConn in the 2022 title game, giving coach Geno Auriemma the first title loss in his career.

45. In 1992, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling determined that Title IX allowed for the recovery of monetary damages in the case of Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools.

46. The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act was passed in 1994 and required schools receiving federal assistance to disclose gender equity information.

47. When it comes to high school participation, girls still do not have the participation opportunities provided to boys pre-Title IX (3.4 million girls vs. 3.6 million boys). Women’s participation still lags at the collegiate level, too, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation.

48. On May 8, 2018, Rancho Buena Vista High softball teammates Danielle Ellis and Sydney Prenatt won their dispute with the Vista Unified School District board after reporting their high school for Title IX violations. Some of the major points of the dispute included unequal facilities between the softball and baseball teams, having to go off campus for their facility and to secure their own transportation to and from it. The board approved their request for an on-campus softball field, the University of Maryland’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Howard Center for Investigative Journalism reported on April 11.

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49. The majority of disputes and legal action taken at the high school level around Title IX revolve around amenities, field conditions and the allocation of resources, the Povich Center and Howard Center found.

50. The 66 medals won by U.S. women at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were the most won by U.S. women at the Games, according to USA Today.

(Top photo of Patsy Mink: Joe Marquette / Associated Press)

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